Natural Healing – one day at a time

7-Day Fast

Sugar Addiction

As I detailed in a separate post, I had believed that my 7-day water fast had helped me beat my sugar addiction. I am ‘somewhat’ sorry to say that my affinity for sugar has returned. I say ‘somewhat’ because, in all honesty, it felt strange to not desire what I considered my one vice in life – chocolate. I don’t drink alcohol. I don’t smoke. I don’t even consume caffeine. But eating chocolate and sweets was something that I truly enjoyed. After 46-years on this earth, when looking at a delicious piece of chocolate cake no longer triggered any salivatory reaction whatsoever, it was surprisingly somewhat perturbing.

So it appears that my 7-day water fast helped beat back my sugar cravings for slightly more than a month. After that, I found that my body was starting to crave sugar again. I am, once again, able to consume vast amounts of sugar in one sitting, but as my weight is stable and I only eat every other day, my average daily consumption of sugar is probably not anything to be terribly concerned about. I’m guessing that over time that the sugar craving gut bacteria have gradually repopulated within my intestines and are once again driving my eating habits.

However, as I intend to perform extended fasts every 3-months, I expect that my bodies cravings for sugar will wax and wane with each cycle. This coming January I will be doing either a one or maybe even two-week fast again, which I presume will once again kill my sugar cravings. Given this routine, I will in effect only be sugar dependent for half the year as each fasting cycle entails one-week of pre-fasting and one-week of post-fasting, both of which are modified diets, predominantly plant based. I think I can happily live with this modulating routine and intend to fully enjoy my sugar cravings while I have them.

For anyone thinking of trying an extended fast to help change their eating habits, I should say that I still highly recommend it. After my 7-day water fast, I made absolutely no attempt to stay off of sugar. In fact, I planned my entire fasting schedule around being able to eat at two upcoming birthday parties. Staying off of sugar wasn’t my goal. My goal is to live as normal a lifestyle as possible, and where I live, that naturally entails eating things with sugar in them. My goal in life isn’t to live as long as possible. It’s to enjoy life while living a healthy and prescription-free existence as long as possible. For me, completely giving up sugar isn’t even remotely an option because I derive much too much pleasure from all things delicious.

Having said that, if your goal is to get completely off of sugar, then starting with an extended fast would definitely be one way to kick-start that effort, and if followed up with the required proper eating habits, I believe, an easy way to achieve that goal.

Weight

My weight didn’t really change much at all in October. After eleven months of alternate day fasting, I think it’s safe to presume at this point that this is basically my natural weight. Barring any changes to my diet or drastic changes to my fitness program, I believe that my body will continue to drift towards this balance point (62-63kg) whenever it is pushed either higher or lower from binge eating during vacations or extended multi-day fasts.

Fitness Level

My fitness stats improved slightly. Month-to-month, my pushups are finally back up to 100 from 80, and my chin-ups moved up from 15 to 16, which is still below my all time high of 18. Quite honestly, I haven’t been very consistent with my training. I have been doing the bare minimum to keep my muscle strength.

Health Benefits

Alternate day fasting has helped fix numerous health issues for me, but at this point in my journey, I don’t feel that it will actually improve my health any further. Everything that it could fix has by now been fixed. Now the only reason to continue with this lifestyle is to help maintain my weight. That being the case, I am open to trying other varieties of fasting to see how my body weight responds.

The end of November will mark 1-year of alternate day fasting for me. In December, I am scheduled to take an annual physical. I am keen to compare my numbers from this year with last year to see if there is any change in my blood work. After that is done, I am toying with switching to something else, perhaps a 4:3 fasting schedule with one day purely vegetarian, and seeing if I can still maintain my present weight. There is no one right way to fast, so I encourage everyone to try different methods and find what works best for you.

It’s been three weeks since I completed my 7-day water fast. As I expected, my weight increased by 3kg the first week after the fast as I started re-feeding, but I was still down 2kg from when I started the fast. And since then, as I started alternate day fasting again, I have already lost a further two kilograms which brings me back down to 61kg for a total loss of 4kg since the fast started. Continue reading →

Well, after 9-months of alternate day fasting, I finally got around to trying a 7-day water fast. The idea of attempting one had always been intriguing, but at the same time daunting, and beyond me – a mere mortal. But now with all my alternate day fasting experience under my belt, I felt fairly confident that I would be able to manage a 7-day water fast, although I still wasn’t sure how my body would actually react. Continue reading →